John Edwards’s Plan to Reduce Economic Segregation

Richard D. Kahlenberg, The Century Foundation, 5/7/2007

== In fact, however, dozens of studies going back forty years have indicated that giving poor kids a chance to attend middle-class schools is probably the single most effective policy option available for raising their achievement levels and life chances. The seminal 1966 Coleman Report found that the most important predictor of academic achievement, after the socioeconomic status of the family a child comes from, is the socioeconomic makeup of the school she attends—a finding replicated in an enormous number of studies since then. While it is possible to make schools with high concentrations of poverty work—we all know of such individual schools—it is extremely uncommon. A study by University of Wisconsin professor Douglas Harris, for example, found that middle-class schools (those with fewer than 50 percent of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch) are twenty-two times as likely to be consistently high performing as high-poverty schools (those with 50 percent or more of students eligible for subsidized lunch).

Middle-class schools perform better in part because middle-class students on average receive more support at home and come to school better prepared. But the vastly different educational environments typically found in middle-class and high-poverty schools also have a profound effect on achievement. On the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) given to fourth graders in math, for example, low-income students attending more affluent scored substantially higher (239) than low-income students in high poverty schools with 75 percent or more low income (219). This twenty-point difference is the equivalent of almost two year’s learning. Indeed, low-income students given a chance to attend more affluent schools performed more than half a year better, on average, than middle-income students who attend high-poverty schools (231). At the high school level, similar results are found. In 2005, for example, University of California professor Russell Rumberger and his colleague Gregory J. Palardy found that a school’s socioeconomic status had as much impact on the achievement growth of high school students as a student’s individual economic status.==

== The Moving to Opportunity results suggest that housing voucher programs need to ensure that opportunities are truly open, so that low-income families are not simply moving from horrible neighborhoods to bad ones. And housing programs can be supplemented by education programs to ensure that low-income students, whatever their neighborhood, have access to middle-class schools. In Wake County, North Carolina, where John Edwards sent his older children to the public schools, officials have created an innovative plan using magnet schools and other means to give all children a chance to attend good, middle-class schools. In 2000, the school board set a policy goal that no school should have more than 40 percent of students eligible for free or reduced price lunch. The results are impressive: low-income Wake County students do much better than low-income students in other big North Carolina districts that don’t have programs to alleviate poverty concentrations. On the 2005 High School End of Course exams, 63.7 percent of low-income students in Wake County passed, compared to 48.7 percent in Durham County, 47.8 percent in Guilford County, and 47.8 percent in Mecklenburg County. Likewise, 82.2 percent of Wake County’s students graduated on time from high school in 2002–03—the second highest rate among the nation’s largest fifty districts nationally. By comparison, 66.2 percent of students in North Carolina and 69.6 percent nationally graduated on time.

At long last, a politician has offered a promising alternative to the usual small-bore education reforms for poor kids. Too bad the Washington Post missed the significance of his proposals.==

http://www.tcf.org/list.asp?type=NC&pubid=1572

only about 20% of the students would have been considered middle class. When I was a freshman there were 386 people in my class, we graduated 222. Half of those who left dropped out, others moved away. lucky bastards. I was one of the middle classers so I got to go to college and am about to graduate, but most from my school havent. A sad shitty cycle.

How many poor people has Edwards invited to live at his 28000 sq.ft home?



There is no doubt he can afford it.

if you're going to spread right-wing talking points about the Edwards family house, you ought to get the square footage correct; its 10400 excluding the garage and other areas besides the main house.

But there is no denying that the Edwards family lives in a big ass house: only about 600 square feet smaller that President Thomas Jefferson's (that filthy capitalist!) but not nearly as large and FDR's family estate (now there's a rich bastard who did nothing for the poor!).

I'm just glad that Obama and Kucinich have modest houses or I'd have to vote for a Republican this election!

:sarcasm:

I don't know how large Obama's house is but I do know that he made roughly a million dollars last year. There is simply no "average Joe" in the race. Even Kucinich's income is in the six figures. The singling out of Edwards is lame.

Edwards made his money suing big corporations for putting out lousy, unsafe products.

My recollection is that Johnson was an impressive individual and married at least some money in the lovely Lady Bird.

Both men remembered where they came from.

Here's how the house breaks down, according to the Carolina Journal:
http://carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=3848
How on earth can you pretend to think that the 15K plus recreation barn and the 2K plus connective rooms don't count!
The house in total IS over 28,000 square feet. Deal with it.

I like Obama, Edwards, Dodd, Kucinich (and Gore or Clark if they had chosen to run).

I think I'm voting Kucinich but there is still time and plenty of debates to change my mind.

Oh, here are some swankier houses than the Edwards family mansion (and they are all owned by filthy capitalist pigs who hate the poor!):

I'm not a Kucinich supporter, but at this point, I think Kucinich himself would be less vulnerable to fatal ridicule from Repubs in the General Election than Edwards would be. I'm one of the undecided. I'm leaning towards Hillary now (I think), Obama would be a good candidate too, and I'd love to see Gore get in as well, but I really doubt he will at this point.

Now THAT'S rich!

If you are worried that Edwards hair, house and homespun charm are impediments to a winning candidacy, what impediments are there to a Kucinich winning candidacy? Are they bigger or smaller?

I can't believe there is a sidebar conversation "concerning" Edwards barriers to getting elected while at the same time suggesting that Kucinich will not have these problems.

Oh, maybe not the SAME problems. ROFL

offers the most promise and best rhetoric.

At this stage, I'm going with best ideas.

and see what reaction you get.

If you want to repeat right-wing talking points to try and promote one candidate or attack another, that's your prerogative. Your bias is less apparent, however, when you bother to get the facts correct.

I'm willing to bet that Dennis Kucinich made less money last year and lives in a more modest house than your preferred candidate so let's pursue your non-issue-related smear to its logical conclusion: KUCINICH '08!

"I'm just glad that Obama and Kucinich have modest houses or I'd have to vote for a Republican this election!"......

:rofl:

to the White House?

( Bill Clinton had very little income, compared to some of the folks running now. The Governorship of Arkansas paid very little, if I recall.)

Are you that scared that Edwards can actually win the Presidency? that you need to question his sincerity. No other candidates care about Economic Growth or improving the Domestic Economy.

do you prefer Obama's Trial by Fire - hopefully things won't get too hot, he should ask Jimmy Carter for advice.

discrimination and no one who has health insurance cares about universal coverage and law-abiding citizens don't care about the death penalty and ...

haha

If you're going to start sending students from poor neighborhoods to middle class schools, either you have to relocate them, which may not really be possible to do in significant numbers, or just bus them out to middle class schools. Then, you have to deal with the capacity of middle class schools. With more students, you'll have to expand the size of these schools to account for the extra students, hire more teachers, etc... OR (and I don't think this is a good option) offset the increases by sending students from the middle class schools to those of poorer neighborhoods.

All in all, it sounds like it would be a good idea, but it can be very expensive (and if you don't get the funding, it could be ineffective) and when you start transferring money from schools in poorer neighborhoods to middle class schools, there's a potential hornet's nest of political controversy there as well.

The middle class schools in our white suburbs (surrounding a predominantly black inner city) are filled to capacity. Many of them already can't accept students from the same district through the schools of choice option because they just don't have room.

The state aid follows the student, so if you transfer a student to a school in the suburb, you've just taken money from the inner city school and invested yet more in the suburban school. The more you do that, the larger the divide gets.

The program is actually very similar to a Clinton program, taking poor folk (usually black, but not necessarily black) and plopping them in middle class neighborhoods. Usually there was an uptick in crime, but the kids do far better on average.

This is also the motivation for the (so-called) horrible policy in NOLA of not wanting to rebuild the projects as they were, but demolish them and put up mixed-income housing.

Both have at their core breaking up pockets of persistent poverty; there should--but isn't--some mechanism to keep the people from returning to their old neighborhoods. But the program's better than nothing.

but is there sufficient rental property available in these middle class neighborhoods, and will sufficient funding be available to provide enough vouchers to make a difference? I don't think the plan is a bad idea, I just think that, logistically and financially, it's a lot more difficult than it sounds.

But it's not just a huge program. To implement it for a few million people would be more than it could handle. (I really have no idea if the program's continued under *. I know some aspects--breaking up projects--has.)

What is Clinton's program? Where are those studies?

While this sounds on the whole like a good idea, it's worth being very cautious of the statistic in the first paragraph.

While there clearly is strong correlation between school attended and academic outcome, I believe (my source for this is the book "Freakonomics", not on the internet, so I can't link to it) that there is relatively little difference between the performance of students in presigious schools and of those from similar backgrounds who try *and fail* to get into such schools, suggesting that the correlation is more due to children with pushy/supportive parents getting into better schools irrespective of background than with the schools themselves.

That said, *I* would certainly try and get any child of mine into the best school available.

http://books.google.com/books?id=LkQPOSXMUscC&pg=PP1&ots=4nSnG7jmKS&dq=freakonomics&sig=xPRdMZadGYWylWx1aUvdN5PMVPA

So, let us know which page this on.

I was interested in reading it but when I was flipping through the pages it looks like it jumps from page 6 to 15 to 55, etc.

Did I just do it wrong?

It's in the "What Makes a Perfect Parent" chapter, IIRC, though, so it would be shortly after page 147 if you can find it.

up to page 145, and, up to that point, it only says that the graduation rate was the same for CPS students who entered the lootery but who went to the school of their choice and those who remained in their old schools with the exception of students who went to the technical school, who had much higher graduation rates if they went to the tech school rather than the school in the were required, by geography, to attend.

The author's broader conclusion about these stats is in later pages, so I don't know what the argument is.

I did find this summary somewhere else:

Freakonomics points out that in Chicago’s experiment with school choice, only half of the parents and students took advantage of the opportunity to participate in the school choice program. One key lesson learned by that experiment was that, while attendance at the students' school of choice did not impact the students' educational outcomes, students who chose to participate in the application lottery were much more likely to graduate from high school than those who did not participate. In other words, it was not the outcome of the lottery that mattered (whether the student did or did not get to attend their chosen school) but the student’s participation in the lottery itself that indicated their likelihood of succeeding in school.

Students who are motivated enough to find out about and participate in a school choice option are our schools’ most successful students and they deserve high quality educational options. However, those students who, to date, have not been high performers and, as such, are not likely to take advantage of school choice options, are entitled to educational opportunities that are equally sound. Whole school reform and the conversion of existing, low performing or restructuring schools ensures the provision of a high quality education to all of Maryland’s youth.

http://www.baltimorecp.org/newsletter/BCPnews_oct05.htm#freak


Edwards's plan is about moving families out of poor neighborhoods and not about sending the kids to better schools while continuing to live in poor neighborhoods. It's a plan to get rid of poor neighborhoods, since poor schools tend to be in poor communities.

I have a friend from Europe who commented that the US is one of the most geographically and class divided socieites she had ever seen. She said that in Europe cities don't have poor neighborhoods and rich neighborhoods (eg, gated communities and vast areas of slums). That's what this proposal addresses. And this is also an issue that relates to democracy. If you are poor and live next door to a rich person, and your kids go to the same school, your child is going to benefit from the political and economic power of that rich person who can really press to make sure that public services like education, good librares, etc., will continue to be provided.

Rising transportation prices, rising product prices, rising cost of living, and who suffers? Those who have the least again at the mercy of those who want to run it all, have it all.